This is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
MARGARET BILYARD: American Bar Association has one set of rules. This place has a different set of rules. So, the good thing is that you will not have to sit through all the stuff I put down about enabling legislation. It was interesting, the only way I could get CLE credit. Anybody that is a lawyer, if you get on that American Bar Association, there's another version of this that is recorded. Which I think is really good because that way, I worked hard to get CLE credit so I could get it recorded. I guess we'll just get started can we go around the room tell me why you are taking this.
HOPE: My name is Hope. Pronouns, she, her. I'm white, wear glasses. I'm a 3L at University of Texas School of Law. I represent my co-president. I'm representing Texas Law Disability Neurodivergent Alliance on behalf of students. Sent here by National Disability, National Disability Law Students Association. So that's why I'm here, to learn.
MARGARET BILYARD: I've been to Texas.
Cat: I'm Cat, middle aged Asian woman with dyed red hair. I am founding partner for our disability rights practice group at my firm. Headquartered in New Orleans. I'm in the San Francisco office. I am, do a ton of litigation for other corporate defendants, other schools for not having emergency evacuation plans for people with disabilities, which is an emerging area that I'm particularly interested in and have interest in. I am, I am the outreach specialist with American Federation for the Blind and people with disabilities.
Bernard: Hey, my name is Bernard. I look like Brad Pitt.
[ Laughter ]
No, I'm a white male and I have no hair. I'm not a lawyer. But I work for the government. I'm contract specialist, work for Federal Government. Contract specialist. I'm studying to be an arbitrator. I'm blind. I'm a member of the National Federation of the Blind in Virginia. I actually was across the street from the Pentagon on 911. I'm interested in how to protect myself and my family from disasters and how to protect them. Prevent disasters and survive disasters.
Hi. My name is ( ). I am a tall Hispanic male with black frame glasses. Professor at St. Johns University School of Law in Queens. One of the courses I teach is disability. But in my life before becoming a lawyer, I used to be disaster ( ). I work for Catholic Relief Services in the field two years. I still am interested in the subject and would like to learn how these two areas intersect.
Ben: Ben Davis, middle aged Black male lawyer. I joined September 2022. I enjoyed my experience. We do a lot of impact litigation. Wanted to branch out other avenues we think we can use to protect people and just learning more.
My name is Margaret. I'm legally blind. I taught Montessori 10 years. Worked as a nanny for 30 years for parents who worked for Duke University. I work for doctors. And then I, during that whole time, I was a Red Cross volunteer, been a volunteer almost 50 years. I work as supervisor management sheltering. I'm disability integration volunteer. I work with clients and staff people with disabilities. And I am legally blind also. So, but I deploy all over the country. So, when, nobody said they were from southern parts of the country. I have been to every one of those southern parts of the country more than once. So, that's basically about me. I'm just going to supplement some of the sheltering parts of the lecture that Nancy is going to be doing her part of the lecture.
NANCY MAYER: My name is Nancy Mayer, probably have to say I'm a little older than middle age. My hair is gray and brown. I wear glasses. And I have a tan shirt on with a multicolored jacket. I use her and she pronouns. I am Disability Integration Lead for North Carolina for the entire region. And turns out I'm the only disability lead in all assigned in the southeast district. I mean division, southeast division of Red Cross covers everything south of, nobody else designated DI lead in that area. So, I'm going to be participating in summit in early April about how to implement new guidelines for the disability integration world in the Red Cross. It is definitely intersection. Something we've had trouble with and we're trying very hard to become much more welcoming to people with disabilities. I got it.
What is a disaster? It's a sudden event great damage loss of destruction. FEMA has its own definition. Occurrences natural, accident or human cause event that is resulted in severe property damage deaths and multiple injuries. A large scale disaster this is actually the same for FEMA and the Red Cross, is one that exceeds the response capability of local jurisdiction and requires state and potentially federal involvement. So, disasters we handle and this is one I had to change to be approved to be here. I had little pictures and they said you don't have words. So, we're having words here. These are hurricanes, you want to go over these?
MARGARET BILYARD: Yes, I will, those that live in southeast know what hurricanes are, we have hurricane watches, hurricane warnings, hurricane watches may we'll go over that later.
MARGARET BILYARD: Then we have tornadoes,, southeast Midwest knows what had what tornadoes are. We've are had ice storms. Earthquakes not common on east coast until recently. Snow storms. Then we're going to go over other types of disasters.
NANCY MAYER: Red Cross response single multipliers, these are ongoing, and we respond to fire every eight minutes. So, you hear about big disaster relief operations in reality what we called disaster teams, disaster, disaster action teams. They are the ones that do most of the work. More likely to be coming one-on-one with them than anyone else. If you ever see on your nightly news, you see fire our hear fire more likely than not there's going to be Red Cross presence at that fire. So, this is not something to, I mean the DAP people are the ones you are going to see more than anyone else. I'm sorry this is -- okay, American Red Cross role in disaster sheltering. Big thing here to remember is that the Red Cross manages shelters but state or other government agencies who decides if one will open. They often also decide where they will be open. Which means we don't always have control over making it accessible place or useful place. Some jurisdictions may require people disabilities to what they call special needs areas. These shelters managed by other governmental agencies such as local, county or state or public health entity very large disasters special medical need shelter that's for people who need active medical care; go ahead.
MARGARET BILYARD: Okay. Many different kinds of shelters, but when you are, when you come into our shelter or volunteer in our shelter, our main goal is care of the client and the care of the clients in our shelter. We have volunteers that are trained in many different areas to assist needs of the client. And we have different kinds of shelters. We have regular shelter may hold only between 250 people to 500 people. Then we have what is known as the mega shelters they use those a lot in Midwest, Texas specifically. Where they can hold up to 10 thousand clients.
Then we have what I call the staff shelter where we take care of our own. There's some jurisdictions where we go where there's no hotels. Good example in Kentucky. If all hotels are damaged, we can't stay in them. So a lot of people don't realize that when staff person shows up, they are going to be sleeping on a cot. In sleeping bag just like most of the clients are. As many, I spent more times in staff shelters than I have in hotels. Sometimes I'd rather stay in staff shelter a lot of hotels have bed bugs.
[ Laughter ]
NANCY MAYER: Let's move on. Major challenges special needs sheltering. We had examples last year people having terrible experiences with special need shelter. They segregate and separate families. No consideration individual independence, no distinction between type of care needed, if any risk of institutionalization. Overextends nurses and other medical personnel when having to provide care for people who really don't need nursing and specialized care but if you have disability, for example, if you are in wheelchair that they may send you to special needs shelter. They used to do this a lot. People getting sent to special needs. Now we have different world, with uninterrupted power Red Cross can shelter 99.9% of population with or without disabilities. We're doing pretty well. I'll get, we'll get here.
American, so American Red Cross moving to, this is aspiration, everyone is welcome. We want to be able to handle most disabilities in the general population shelter. It's very important that we try this. Everyone should be welcome. Red Cross committed to serving whole community including those with disabilities, before, during and after disasters. We use FEMA division of access and needs, people from dependency, limited ago says to transportation, limited English proficiency, non-English speakers, people of low socioeconomic status, individuals experiencing homelessness, and sometimes medical facilities bring people with disabilities to ARC shelters without medical information. That's always, empty out nursing home send them to general shelter. We won't have any idea what's going on but we still attempt to serve.
We have nurses and doctors who volunteer with Red Cross. And if they do, they'll do on the stop analysis of what is going on with the person. We do not want to have, we do not want to have a situation that people go to special needs that they go to special needs place when they don't need to. If you can handle yourselves at home you should be able to be in general needs shelter. Gail McGovern quote, Red Cross firmly committed to serving the needs and interest of all people, including those with disabilities.
So, we have our, we have our marching orders. We use C-MIST, C communication, M maintaining health, I independence, S support safety and self-determination and transportation. This is, what this means is that we have survey covering these topics for every single family unit or individual who comes into the shelter. So if you have individual at family unit they'll get questioned. If family unit comes in we'll go to everyone and get answers on this. So that we know what they need for accommodations. We know what to get. We have things like separate rooms for people who, get sensory overload. Things as I was saying weighted blankets. Everywhere from making sure we have ramps everywhere to accessible bathrooms.
If we know the disability is needed for the community, we will do everything we can to get it. If we don't know about it, a lot of these shelters we try to set up a head of time people with some disabilities will have it covered. They won't have to ask for accessible bathroom because there already is one. First slide I said we don't always control where these shelters are opened up, sometimes the state sends us to a place that isn't as good as the one we wished we h the one we thought would be very good, we get one less optimal, there's nothing we can do about that, that's, I mean we can argue with the state but we try to ep coo the state on our side. So we work hard.
MARGARET BILYARD: If with get a lot of churches, some are older churches or older buildings, we bring in what is necessary to assist disability. We bring in portable accessibility showers for not just the access, a lot of churches don't have showers for the general public. We also bring in accessibility bathrooms. And we put them right adjacent to the building so our clients have access to these facilities.
Need be, sometimes I've been in a church they didn't have a place for people to sit down to eat. They bought in like a tent, like they use at wedding receptions, that's where the people ate. They made sure it was accessible for everybody to be able to go to the tent who was in a wheelchair or crutches or anything like that. It wasn't optimal but that's what we do, we try to make something that's not optimal, optimal for the client.
NANCY MAYER: Has anybody here been to Red Cross shelter. What was the experience.
ATTENDEE: I went, during, right after Hurricane Harvey cause I lived through that, yeah, I mean, responsibility informed by response after Hurricane Katrina, I think knowing little bit about how responses changed very nice. I think obviously always room for improvement. It was good experience seems weird to describe a situation where you go volunteer after huge natural disaster, very professional people who...
NANCY MAYER: Anything else? Last time somebody I knew personally came to this she said she was at wildfire in the Midwest. She was Native American a lot of those Indian lands have wildfires she was in shelter after wildfire she was in wheelchair sent to special need shelter. She was sent to one shelter. Her father who had different disability got sent to another rest of the family got sent to a third. We found out that's not the best way to run things try not to have that happen. Family units staying together is really important. We attempt to serve everybody all kind of disabilities in a general, we call it general population shelter. We do have special need shelters we agree with at the Red Cross need active nursing care if you need active nursing care there are shelters you can go to red cross does not attempt to handle that health services handle that.
ATTENDEE: Red Cross policies, regarding special needs, do those come from FEMA or those policies that the red Cross put in place to address the need of people with disabilities?
NANCY MAYER: It's the Red Cross, we parallel what FEMA, if they have not, we want, those of us, some of us have been trained as managers we actually have gone to all FEMA training for disasters. And we try to parallel, Red Cross reformatted their organizational structure so names are the same so that if somebody comes from FEMA to Red Cross or vice versa there won't be a lot of name switching. We worked really hard to try to match FEMA's policies so that when people switch from one to the other, they are not going to be confused. So, now we get into know before you go. Evacuating shelter or stay in play. We realize many people and it seems to be particularly people with disabilities do not want to leave their home although we don't believe in that, that's always the best situation. We don't want somebody to really make a bad mistake here.
Understanding weather reports this is short thing we discovered this is really important people get a lot out of this. Some disasters forecasted allowing them to prepare after forecast floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, snow storms. Some staffed every disasters are not forecasted. Requiring plan before they happen in case they happen. Earthquakes, toxic nuclear releases and forest fires. Some disasters are sort of forecasted volcanos, earthquakes, forest fires and thermonuclear war. Believe it or not that's one of the disasters we have on our list. Some forecasted you know they are coming M of them sort of forecasted some of them are not forecasted at all.
MARGARET BILYARD: One of the most recent evacuation shelters we are involved with emergency management different communities in the country is school evacuations in case incident in the school, we support the community needs of the children until they can reunite with their parents. We set up emergency shelter as way from the school by feeding emotional support through psychological volunteers and pastoral care volunteers. Other volunteers to assist.
NANCY MAYER: Spiritual, ministers, Rabbis and we also have psychologists so, we have both, we have all kinds of support we might be able to help with. Weather warnings watches and add.
ATTENDEE: Talking about active shooter.
NANCY MAYER: Somebody we're worried about not active shooter. If it's a, if a school needs to be evacuated Red Cross will probably be involved in that process. Not, not only for children maybe for the parents.
MARGARET BILYARD: Yes --
ATTENDEE: I was hoping you would deal with that I'm government employee we go through active shooter drills they don't talk about what you should do if you are disabled.
NANCY MAYER: If Red Cross shelter we handle it.
ATTENDEE: They say --
NANCY MAYER: During the disaster that's getting into more FEMA work than the Red Cross as much as we might want to we're not all being.
ATTENDEE: Acknowledge your point it is reason why I'm interested in this topic consistently litigate this issue because there aren't ( ) you have, forgive me for taking over California State University system I see them all the time. They do not have standards. Everything, if it campus does have standard differs.
MARGARET BILYARD: You came out with a good question, because I do disability, I do disaster preparedness for at risk populations in state of North Carolina central and the coast work with case workers. And emergency management started showing up at some classes. I don't know about these people and they started talking to the case workers, can you give me their information, their address, their phoning number, so, if something does happen in my county, I can arrange for them to be transported to evacuation shelter or to Red Cross shelter or community shelter. And it started the ball rolling because emergency management sometimes does not know there's an at risk population or where they live and so they started some of these counties database of these people that were in the classes.
NANCY MAYER: We have that in Orange County, my mother who was in her 90s on the list. Whenever there was emergency she got a call said do you want to be evacuated? Do you need some other help? Yeah, they are starting a list for people like that so that they will be able to track them. Training for people in different disasters, this is some of the training, covering weather disasters here, active shooter, disasters, we need to think about whether we want to get into that, whether Red Cross wants to start training for that. Back to the originally scheduled program.
MARGARET BILYARD: Sorry.
NANCY MAYER: I know you were. Weather warnings, watches and advisories, each disaster has its own definition, this will give you timeline. This is website. If you get on this website tells you what deaf this is for flash flood warnings, hurricane warnings, watches, tells you exact definition, some of them have timelines like hurricane warning. It gives you amount of time before you better get your acts in gear. We would strongly suggest that when you get watches that you start your planning then or even before then. So it's not a surprise later.
So, we also have ones for volcanos, I searched hard.
MARGARET BILYARD: Only place I know having active volcanos is Iceland.
NANCY MAYER: We have Mt. St. Helens and Hawaii gets them. This is the website how they give warnings whatever about volcanos, by the way when Mt. St. Helens hit, people still ignored them. Earthquakes, they have another warning system for that, this is the website for that. And finally, Tsunamis, another different warning system earths quakes around the world cause them here they do have a system. Each warnings, watches, advisories have definitions they let you know how likely it is it will happen and how soon given definitions for that disaster.
So, understanding evacuations. Recommended, strongly encouraged to leave may become mandatory as event develops, may become more difficult to leave later, access to public transportation may be difficult to impossible. What is important is to realize if you need a little more time, people, elderly like my mom who is 90 may take longer to evacuate. When you get recommended evacuation do your stuff then, if it becomes mandatory you may not have enough time to get your act together.
Plan when you get the recommended evacuation, that's the time if you think you need little more time to do it, that's the time for you to be doing it. In North Carolina we have a problem with some of the accessible transportation not running once a once there's -- when it's just a watch way out there. The transportation for people with disabilities has already stopped. So, you are going to have to come up with another way to transport yours if in your community they stop with just a watch or maybe if a watch comes in they may say, we'll give you, you know, they'll only run for six or eight hours after that then they'll stop so when they give you that warning pay attention. Know your timelines. They could probably tell you a head of time if you contacted them to find out how long it's going to be running. Red Cross usually runs on five-day process, five days before they think they are going to open up shelter they start planning process and start getting stuff in gear. Probably seen pictures of vans coming in getting ready for hurricanes. Red Cross runs or on five day planning cycle. You may need multi day planning cycle, if you see something coming start getting watches to start planning which you are going to have to do.
Then mandatory evacuations, this means leave now. For those that take little longer to leave you are going to be ready or you would have already left. Some states do not allow you to refuses. Law enforcement comes in and will take you away. Other states leave decision to citizens. But North Carolina they leave it to citizens but what they do in North Carolina is that government will tell you to please use indelible ink and put social security number on your torso in case they need to identify your body. Usually that gets people to leave.
Please do not play games with emergency mandatory. Governors makes decisions and they don't take them lightly. North Carolina because outer banks take so long to evacuate they usually do it during watch when it's not sure if hurricane is going to hit. But they do it because they know how much time it's going to take to empty out the islands and plan ahead of time. So, please, please, please, take these seriously and then if, the hurricane never hit, blah, blah, blah, if the hurricane hit you'd be happy you weren't there.
And if you have the wherewithal, before the emergency evacuation is even announced, if you have wherewithal in transportation get out, go where the hurricane is not going to go, go someplace safe. Go to Aunt Sally in DC or whatever your definition is going to be and get out because you will not have the sometime later to be able to do that. Timing is really really important.
MARGARET BILYARD: Another thing when they tell adults to ID themselves, they say, also, ID your children and when they start, heard families change their mind when they say that because they need to know identity of them.
NANCY MAYER: They need to know who people are. So, there's two types of shelter, evacuation shelter is a basically keep you healthy and keep you alive during the disaster. It's usually these are not set, they do not have a lot of accessibility as much as we want to provide as much accessibility as possible. Goal is to keep you alive until the disaster is over.
Pets may be allowed in North Carolina we've been working on getting co-located pet shelters, either room in the same building or a 18 wheeler come up and they'll be able to keep pets we don't want people not to go to a shelter because they have a pet. Food may be provided. Cots may be set up. And it may close when safe for residents. Very short term situation.
MARGARET BILYARD: 12 or 24 hours. If it's building that's rather old don't expect to be staying in a gym you'll be it sitting on the floor.
NANCY MAYER: Long term shelters goal here keep everybody safe, sanatory a lot more options here. Pets may be allowed to cohabitate with owners depending on space. Serves meals and snacks, more services provided including help with recovery and sometimes, sometimes entertainment.
The chorus from my churching goes and visits big shelters they do when the they can. Have preschool people come help. Closes once occupants put in transitional housing. Nobody gets put back on the street. More than you few times homeless people end up in shelter, we get them connected with the right people. Very interesting way that goes. If they are not safe, turns out people in non ( ) make it easier to get assistance from variety of agencies. Usually set up if long term big, FEMA set up table with FEMA and other agencies to help people get what they had need before they leave the shelter. These are really big.
What they did in North Carolina I think it was Harvey, sat on the coast for a long time and they had them, they were sitting there they had emergency shelter. As soon as they were able to get buses in, they bus them to where I live, Durham, North Carolina. We were using the center and using empty shopping malls.
MARGARET BILYARD: There was a mega shelter, they were using North Gate Durham.
NANCY MAYER: We were able to provide all kind of stuff. People with disabilities were able to get whatever accessible items they needed we had the time, space. Win an area not undergoing disaster itself. I live two to three hours inland. So when they, when the shelters, when evacuation shelters emptied out they put them two or three hours inland. We had not under gone the hurricane. We were in good shape to help people. We were able to provide concerts. Anybody that played music was able to come in and help. It's hard when sitting there for weeks not able to get back home.
MARGARET BILYARD: They bring in child care and organization that we work with save the children foundation. They come in with licensed preschool teachers and teachers because they are licensed they passed background checks, they come in and work. What I like about them they separate age levels like school age from preschool. They would come in in the morning two or three hours. Then take children back to the parents so they can eat lunch with parents.
Then in afternoon come in for another two, to three hours. This is really for parent because it gives them time to do what they need to do with their recovery. And also gives sense of normalcy for children. And another thing we do for long-term shelters I'm one of the people if I'm working at a shelter, it's been open already for three, four weeks I go to the shelter management or shelter lead and I say, maybe we should, some way to start public school system in the area to accept these children in shelter. And we get ball rolling. And then when we have children autistic spectrum, early into the sheltering situation, we want them to get sense of normalcy. Sense of normalcy for a lot of older children is to be in cool. So, we bring in a range through the county and schools to bring in special ed teachers that work with autistic children. We provide them with a room as much as we can like classroom setting so, they can set it up the way they need it for the students.
These young people that are in or shelters. Works out really well. Good for the children. Really good for the other shelter clients. And good for children gives them sense of normalcy for horrendous conditions for those children. That's one of my goals I work with children and education, if I'm in shelter it's been open for say, two or three weeks, in some cases you might have shelter open longer we try not to do that anymore. That's when we set up recovery volunteers to start coming in and start working with individual families. If it's a situation where housing is issue and we can't close shelters. School buses pick up children at the shelter and bring them back every day. They pick them up like 6:30 in the morning come back 3:30.
NANCY MAYER: We try to makes their lives as normal as we can. Latest thing to look at this gets closer to what you've been talking about preparing for active shooters, prepare for disruptions not hazard or disasters. Once you've seen one disaster you've seen that disaster. Every disaster is unique every has also own issues. Think about how you be affected if you don't have transportation, if you lose power, if you have no drinking water, if you lose cell service or internet access or run of medicines. These are the disruptions that apply to any disaster that might happen.
I would presume, when talking about the shooting situation that cell service probably one of the first things that goes do you know everybody wants to call. It's important to figure out what to do in those kinds of situations. Can you see how these disruptions would affect them? Regardless of what the, regardless of whether you evacuate or not? Can you, can you understand how these would affect you. These disruptions would affect you? So, it's important to look at that. So, shelter in place. Prepare ahead of time. Have plans in place so you and your loved ones know how to respond. This is, now is the time to plan for this. Have a way to monitor emergency conditions in your area such as hand craft, battery operated weather radio, learn emergency skills such as CPR, and first aid and have emergency supplies.
ATTENDEE: Can I stop you? I don't mean to keep stopping you, what is the Red Cross doing about making CPR classes accessible to blind people.
NANCY MAYER: They actually have a whole system for it now. People that are physically, people that have physical disabilities and people that have other disabilities. The training is, I hope the training is, you can go from words to voice. I hope it meets criteria. I had to go through a lot to get this approved. They do a lot of work to voicing. Now Red Cross materials they start, it's partially on the internet.
ATTENDEE: Can you --
NANCY MAYER: I'll give you my card. Partially on internet then you come in and do practice this. A lot of material is on the internet. I have to assume that it's text to voice capable, I would hope it is for people who have trouble hearing. I know they have to -- the full transcript running next to it. So for people who have trouble hearing they do run the transcript and I hope that they run, that screens are text to voice capable. I don't know. I will check that out. I'll give you my card and I can check that out. Idea for people with disabilities to be able to be trained is something we take seriously even people as I said partially physically have some physical disability, they can do CPR and other ways like on a table, we work hard to train anybody with any kind of disability to be able to be able to react to an emergency. So, I'll give you my card.
ATTENDEE: That would be great. Thank you.
NANCY MAYER: My card doesn't have braille. I haven't spent the money on braille cards yet. So, you should have emergency supplies like food, water and medicines so that you can meet your basic needs. This is something you should plan now, what do you need. What do you think. For medicines, well, we'll get to that in a minute.
Here's the stuff Red Cross has these are websites you can go to. I are they going to hand out all the slides, I guess they are. If they hand out slides all links will be on them you'll be able to click on them. These are the slides, these are the websites where the Red Cross gives information about what you need to prepare for emergencies. So, you want to explain the kits.
MARGARET BILYARD: Okay. A good way to set up prepare is to set up a kit. A lot of you probably seen it either through FEMA or other organizations. You got like plastic tub like play text plastic Tupperware tubs, you should have three days change of clothing, depend on the weather, warm weather summer clothes, winter clothes. You have prescriptions in the tub. You get documents insurance, your, whatever documents you have at home that you, that you need and a lot of people don't realize this. When you have to go to other agencies you need all these documents. You need insurance documents for your car and your home. You need birth certificates. Marriage license in some cases. Because copies of your driver's license. Copies of your credit cards, things like that you put in waterproof plastic folder thing put it in bottom of your kit cause you don't want people to see that. Put your clothes on top. Prescriptions.
Put things that you like to do, like if you like to do puzzle books, some activity that will keep you busy in a shelter or home without electricity part of preplanning. Also, toiletries, very important. And other things that you might need if you are on special diet. Like if you are diabetic or if you are on liquid diet, put like a week's worth of that in your kit.
The reason why we suggest these plastic containers because they are easy to move and waterproof if you have children in your family they should have their own kit through changes of clothing, special food needs, their favorite stuffed animal, blanket. You can put that as, if you think you are going to have to evacuate. Favorite books, just it's waterproof just close it.
Same thing for infants. Formula. Prescriptions, diapers. Clothing. Blankets, things like that. Now I'm going to come to service animals. Service animals are any pet that you're going to evacuate with should have their own kit also. You should have a month's up to week or month's dry cat food or dog food or canned food. Bowls for water and food, favorite bedding and favorite advertisement much easier to move these items in a kit than it would be if you try to do it all separately. And they are easy to store in the back of your car when you have to leave. All you have to do is pick up your kit put it back in the station wagon gone. You can use them as a stay-at-home thing, add things like flashlights. Things like that.
I suggest you bring flashlight to shelter sometimes our electricity goes out takes few minutes for the emergency lighting to come on. Make sure you bring extension cord so you can charge electronics. Most cases do have electricity in our shelters, sometimes we're on emergency generation, may not be able to charge right away but you will be able to charge when we get electricity. I recommend everybody bring their own extension cord.
NANCY MAYER: We'll cover some of this later. Margaret has so much stuff she shares it's hard. Shelter in place basics. Gather t what is important you can make the list now so when you need to put it together won't be a surprise. Gather food, water, medicine. Try to have at least a week's worth of nonperishable food and drinking water on hand. Have at least one month supply of medication, medical supplies. How am I going to get that people don't want to give me that much. You might be surprised. Once you get that month then rotate in app you'll always have a month there. Clothing appropriate for the weather. And keep important legal and insurance.
As a lawyer she talked all about insurance papers, as a lawyer I'm also say put your Will, HIPAA releases all those in the same thing with important papers. When you talk about your medicine, we used to tell people how prescription you have little sticky tab tell people to pit on piece of paper now we're telling people take a picture of that. If you get into shelter, even if you are just going to the shelter to try to get medicine nurses or doctors will be able to use that information to get refill on your medicines if arrangeable to have enough medicine to begin with. Make sure have picture of all little sticky thing on the front of your prescriptions and that is useful they can use that to get refills for whatever you need.
Stores and pharmacies might be closed, sometimes these nurses have ins with other places to get refills. Include over the count medicines, keep list of all medications for easy replacement or refilling at different pharmacy. Determine safe room in your house away from windows and doors. Talking about sheltering in place. Small children or instants need formula. Or dog food. We keep talking about pets. We, any dog that's service animal can come in like a person. Service animals will come in like people. There's no restriction on service animals.
MARGARET BILYARD: I'm pro advocate for service animals in a shelter. I could tell service animal from a pet.
NANCY MAYER: You can tell them by looking at them. The issue we have Red Cross still working on this, are these psychological support animals that are trained to be psychological support animals. Not the ones that people say are psychological support animals but the ones that are trained, the Red Cross as are airlines as are lots of other places are having trouble on accounting for those how to make sure the ones that are trained get let in and the ones, anyway that's still an open issue they have been punting it so far, no, we do not have an answer on that. I would not want to get psychology support animal away from veteran who is suffering in middle of hurricane. Other people may have other ideas I do not want to be the person to take that support animal away.
Shelter in place, stay connected. There's a, there's free emergency alerts almost every area in the country you can sign up for them. You should have back up battery, this is where we are getting to electrical stuff, back up battery another way to recharge cell phone. Have battery or solar powered radio. Plan to monitor weather conditions near you. Keep track, get radio radio. Neighbor contact information a lot of people don't have their phone numbers for their neighbors get your neighbor's phone numbers, especially if they have landlines, because those lines may be the only ones you can work in emergency. A way to get out of your place.
Do you need ramp or stair case, how are you going to leave your place if you are on the fifth floor and all you have is elevator, in that situation you may want to evacuate sooner because that elevator may not be functioning. What to databasing to evacuate. Basics, cell phone and other electronics. One month supply of medication as we said earlier. Legal and insurance papers. Put this all in a, put all papers in plastic baggie so they stay dry.
Three days of supplies, whether appropriate clothing and contract information for family and close friends. Include back up batteries like we said earlier. Take pictures of prescription labels, three days of clothing. Comfort toys or animals. Take pictures of transcription labels as we said and keep them three days’ worth of clothing. This is stuff we want to emphasize, I know we keep saying this but it's really important that you understand whether you evacuate or not you need to have that stuff there. If you are in a shelter don't be shy, ask for what you want or what you need. With C-MIST we hope to address it, we may have missed you or the paperwork may not have caught up, if you need something ask. There's even loner equipment. Have a plan for recharging electronics. Know health, mental health and other services available in the shelter.
Read all notices posted if you can't read need it oral they are not giving announcements over the loud speaker, ask for them to be given over the loud speaker, if you can hear can't see they haven't put the stuff on written stuff, ask for it to be written. Ask for what you need. If you can't read or write, whatever way you normally communicate, let us know and we will do what we can. Listen for the shelter announcements, as I said if you don't hear shelter announcements won't do you any good. Make sure they know you have trouble hearing they'll be able to give you written copy. One last time. Please ask for what you want. Good chance if you ask you can get it. If you don't ask you are not going to get it. Sorry we're just about over. Plan to reconnect with others. This is very important section. One of the sections people, if separated have a way to reconnect with loved ones.
Make sure everyone has contact card. Text message may go through when phone call can't that's true I've been seeing that a lot lately. Have out of town contact to help your household text connect. If Aunt Suzy is in DC that's the person to call. Red Cross has a way if you have your own might be more reliable. Agree to meet in a place. If you leave home choose specific meeting place nearby. If you leave community choose location outside of your community.
Choose this now, do not wait until the emergency happens. Choose it now so you know where you need to go. In the shooting instance that might not be a bad thing to do, decide ahead of time what you are going to do. So, help is available. Help is available when leaving a shelter. This is surprising. Durable medical replacement, Red Cross, these are all people help you when you leave shelter. Female marks this one of the, this is one of the member -- this is website that tells you what money is available has little apply here. I mentioned before, I did this presentation for American Bar Association all lawyers can access it CLE, yeah, I got CLE credit it was recorded. So if you want to watch some of this again you can see it, you can see it on ABA website. So, when this is all done, figure out what you did right, what you did poorly so you can redo it again. So, anybody, and it was climate change only going to be happening more and more often, guys, no way to think about this. How many, I mean New York first hurricane ever with Hurricane sandy. North Carolina used to hurricanes. Anybody have any questions?
ATTENDEE: I never been on it, so I don't know, I mean, is the FEMA website accessible to blind people.
NANCY MAYER: I would hope it is, I don't know, I'm association I'm, aren't all federal websites supposed to be accessible, supposed to be? I guess I would hope its accessible, but I'm not, I mean I'm not from FEMA I never tried it out. So I would hope its accessible but I can't, I mean if, you are right, it's something we need to New York City, right, Margaret.
MARGARET BILYARD: Another thing is that if you ever want to come in and observe or come in and volunteer, we do need people who have disabilities to come and work in the Red Cross organization. Many of you have IT experience, a lot of regular volunteers would not even imagine, that would be a really good asset during a disaster operation having people doing just the IT thing. Like for instance, because I'm a shelter manager, I don't do computers very well because I can't see the screen, but somebody with other disabilities could come in and do the computer work that would leave me free or other managers free to work with a client, work with staff more, cause, in the sheltering we have more paperwork than most of the other Red Cross us functions. They are trying to fix it so we can do it electronically. May Red Cross is working on this, we focus on making shelters accessible, focus on preplanning like this, I hope you've all learned something you didn't know. And think about this stuff.
Important thing is to do it now, come up with your list now of, Margaret was telling you when it needs to go in plastic bins you are probably not going to keep it in the bins all the time you should have your list so you are not running around trying to figure out last minute what do I need to put in this bin, you have your list.
When you were talking about active shooter situation, something we need to address. Important thing is preplanning.
MARGARET BILYARD: At one point working with teachers how to set up classroom kit in case you are in classroom period of time to keep children calm. Now goal is try to get the children out of school into safe environment as soon as possible. I think it's really important for public to be acknowledged about what we do in disaster operations. Really glad you came to listen to us, I hope we weren't boring.
ATTENDEE: I got one more question. I heard you along the way somewhere that you are supposed to put ICE in your phone number that stands for in case offer emergency supposed to put ICE then name of the person in case you have emergency, in your cell phone. But how are police and fire department supposed to get in your iPhone if you got pass code on it.
NANCY MAYER: Program called, there's something on iPhone that let ease opening screen have information on it not a picture road ID has it set up, road ID is charging, unless you want to pay for it. There is a way for you to change the screen that turns on when you, when somebody presses the screen there's a way for that screen to have information you can say things like my emergency contacts are and list the ones you want to be contacted, there is, you can modify opening screen on your phone. I had it when I had, now I have pictures but you can change that opening screen and have it have words on it. It's app in your phone you can do. That's the way to do it. You are absolutely right.
MARGARET BILYARD: Especially if you do voice over where your screen is dark and harder for people to access your iPhone.
ATTENDEE: Called road ID.
NANCY MAYER: There's other ways you can do it, if somebody is searching for it, you can find, it's your what do they call opening screen, the one when you touch it the screen that comes up, that you can have words on it. That's the way to get out of the problem you are talking about. I wouldn't put ICEI would say please contact the following people not everybody will know what ICE means.
NANCY MAYER: R-O-A-D. That's one I had an answer to.
MARGARET BILYARD: Do you do voice over.
ATTENDEE: I do.
MARGARET BILYARD: Might be, unless you somehow can program your iPad so it a layperson who doesn't do voice over can switch the screen to get your personal information. Might have to talk to somebody who teaches voice over or works with IT to be able to do that. I don't do voiceover because when I was teaching it, it drove me crazy. I'm at the point now that I need voiceover. To have to start doing voiceover I'm really going to be really nervous about it.
NANCY MAYER: Easiest thing would be to get someone who can see to put in information for you that way it would be in there, there is a way, road ID does it there are apps on your phone that let you do the same thing. I know it's an emergency kind of thing, it's important, you are right. If you are going around somebody touches your phone all they see are pictures that's not going to tell them who to call. IPhones are set up so you can do that.
ATTENDEE: Thank you.
NANCY MAYER: Any other questions I hope everybody learned something you didn't know.
MARGARET BILYARD: One of the things reunification volunteers that's the oldest, in the Red Cross, been present since World War I, during World War II, after World War II, Jewish families and families that lost each other in Europe and Asia do, due to circumstances of the war, we are still reuniting families.